Security Systems News - Mike Bradleyhttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/taxonomy/term/3597
enPSA-TEC State of the Industry: The ‘brave and bold’ who invest in IT will thrivehttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/psa-tec-state-industry-brave-and-bold-who-invest-it-will-thrive
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<div class="field-item even"> Bradley, Boethel, Simopoulos share details of their IT investment strategies</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2014-05-07T00:00:00-04:00">05/07/2014</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Martha Entwistle</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>WESTMINSTER, Colo.—Invest big in IT smarts and do it now. That is what executives from some leading systems integration firms—Securadyne, Advance Technology and Safeguard Security—say they’re working on at their own companies today.</p>
<p>Securadyne Systems CEO Carey Boethel, Safeguard Security president Mike Bradley, and Advance Technology President Rob Simopoulos shared details of their IT investment strategies during PSA-TEC’s May 6 “State of the Industry” panel discussion. </p>
<p>“Do not be afraid to reinvent your business, be brave and bold,” advised Safeguard’s Bradley.</p>
<p>Safeguard, a 53-year-old full service security company, made some major changes in the past year. It spent close to $500,000 updating a proprietary visitor management software for gated communities and tripled its commercial sales force, but the “most significant” investment, Bradley said, was the February 2013 hiring of a VP of Technology, Scott Thompson. An IT expert, Thompson previously worked for one of Safeguard’s largest customers, a school district in Arizona.</p>
<p>This district is heavily into IT, “writing their own software, doing their own programming,” Bradley said. As soon as he joined Safeguard, Thompson “spent a lot of money fixing things we thought were OK,” Bradley said. “You don’t know how far behind you are until you bring someone in from the outside.”</p>
<p>Thompson is working with all facets of the Safeguard business, from the executive team to sales, accounting and administrative. After a year, Bradley said, the result is a “technology platform we can be proud of.” Safeguard is now doing internally what it has been advising customers to do for a while, he said. “It’s made a huge difference for us.” </p>
<p>Securadyne’s Boethel is also hiring IT experts “with no experience in [physical] security whatsoever” to bring dedicated IT talent into his organization.</p>
<p>“You need all three: people, processes and technology to fulfill the [IT smarts] value proposition,” he said.</p>
<p>Noting that his 2-year-old company last year “grew 105 percent, 35 percent of which was organic,” Boethel said rapid growth can bring chaos. To ensure consistency across all offices, Securadyne in Q4 2013 formed a Program Management Office. Now, “no matter where we do business, we create a consistent experience,” he said.</p>
<p>Boethel called the PMO “a differentiator for us …[that] creates efficiencies in operations [and] transparency that helps us [analyze our business]." Ultimately, and most importantly, the PMO “will feed the bottom line,” he said.</p>
<p>Simopoulos said there’s been a change in the decision makers Advance Technology is encountering. More often than not, it's a “25 or 26-year-old IT person reviewing our capabilities,” he said. The security director is still at the table, but it’s the Millenial IT expert who’s selecting the products/provider, Simopoulos said.</p>
<p>And these IT guys want to talk about IT on a high level, which can sometimes present a problem. “If your sales person can’t discuss IT at that level, you better have an engineer sitting next to him and that’s expensive,” Simopoulos said. The answer for Advance Technology has been “to invest in the sales force.”</p>
<p>Simopoulos encouraged other integrators to “embrace IT, learn it, put it into your business and make sure all your team has it.”</p>
<p>To recruit new IT talent, Simopoulos has gone directly to local community colleges and universities. It’s a plan that’s worked out well for his company and he challenged all of the integrators in the room to take “one hour a quarter” and go to local colleges and talk to the students about the opportunities in physical security.</p> </div>
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<span property="dc:title" content="PSA-TEC State of the Industry: The ‘brave and bold’ who invest in IT will thrive" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Wed, 07 May 2014 19:15:50 +0000SSN Editor17445 at http://www.securitysystemsnews.comhttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/psa-tec-state-industry-brave-and-bold-who-invest-it-will-thrive#commentsStaving turnover with HRGrouphttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/staving-turnover-hrgroup
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<div class="field-item even">Safeguard Security says &#039;it took the guesswork out of hiring.&#039;</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2011-11-10T00:00:00-05:00">11/10/2011</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Martha Entwistle</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—Several years ago Safeguard Security—a super-regional based here, was experiencing very high turnover in its central station. Working with a company called HRGroup, Safeguard learned how to recruit and hire the right people, not only for its central, but also for all areas of its business, Mike Bradley, president of Safeguard Security told<em> Security Systems News</em>.<br /> <br />“The turnover in our central in those days was probably 40 percent and my guess is that now it’s down around 15 percent,” he said. “That’s huge for us. It’s expensive to hire new people, it takes 90 days to get them up to speed and it can take a full year [for those employees] to develop a level of independent competency,” Bradley said.<br /> <br />Safeguard has worked with HRGroup to develop hiring processes for executives, technicians and other employee categories. And now, <a href="http://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/psa-security-launches-leadership-institute">PSA Security is sharing HRGroup’s expertise with integrators who opt in to the PSA Leadership Institute program.</a></p>
<p>“The central station is the front line and an important face of our business,” Bradley said. With the high turnover, morale was low and “things were not good,” he said.<br /> <br />Working with HRGroup, “we benchmarked five or six of our best central station agents and [HRGroup] used that to create what’s called a forecaster.” The forecaster shows a statistical profile of the ideal central station worker at Safeguard Security.<br /> <br />It’s a measurement of the different personality traits and work skills— in this case, friendliness, math and verbal skills, ability to work well in a group—and it gives a “plus or minus” range where the ideal candidate would fall in the different metrics. Determining where a candidate falls is easy, he said.<br /> <br />“Now, when we test for that position [or any other position,] we overlay the candidate’s score against the benchmark, push a button and we can see how they score,” Bradley said. Bradley said that candidates can’t beat the test—it’s designed in a way that it’s obvious if someone is trying to manipulate the test, he said.</p>
<p>“It’s taken the guesswork out of hiring,” Bradley explained.<br /> <br />What about hiring for positions such as qualified technicians that are typically difficult to find? Ted Szaniawski, HRGroup founding partner said he’s helped integrator clients deal with this problem.</p>
<p>“One strategy to overcome this is to hire individuals with the basic skills who have the aptitude to learn and bring them along. This of course entails making sure these individuals are retained after investing in their development,” he said.</p>
<p>And what about the time commitment for integrators who want to work with HRGroup? The process usually involves an initial 20-30 minute telephone conversation with the CEO through which HRGroup learns about the organization and their immediate hiring needs and it explains its approach and fee structure, he said.</p> </div>
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<span property="dc:title" content="Staving turnover with HRGroup" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:37:49 +0000SSN Editor15056 at http://www.securitysystemsnews.comhttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/staving-turnover-hrgroup#commentsPSA Security launches Leadership Institutehttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/psa-security-launches-leadership-institute
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<div class="field-item even">Program designed to be relevant to integrators and flexible enough for company executives to participate in</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished dc:date"><span class="date-display-single" property="schema:datePublished dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2011-10-27T00:00:00-04:00">10/27/2011</span></div>
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<div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author dc:creator">Martha Entwistle</div>
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<div class="field-item even" property="schema:articleBody content:encoded"> <p>SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—The CEO of a successful independent integration firm is likely a great manager, but is he or she a great leader? Maybe, but not necessarily, said PSA Security CEO Bill Bozeman on Oct. 24, when he announced the launch of a new training program for integrators called PSA Security Leadership Institute.</p>
<p>“Leadership is influence,” Bozeman said. “It’s our goal to teach you to have positive influence,” he said.</p>
<p>Bozeman described the new program at the PSA Security Annual Convention, which took place here from Oct. 21-25. An annual gathering of PSA owners and vendors, the convention drew more than 50 companies this year.</p>
<p>The leadership training was developed entirely by PSA Security staff and will include elements from a number of different sources including Dale Carnegie, HRGroup of Tempe Arizona, and leadership gurus such as John Maxwell.</p>
<p>There will be a charge for the training, which will be delivered in a number of formats including webinars, online, teleconferences and face-to-face meetings. Locations for those meetings have not yet been determined, but likely will include PSATEC, ISC West, and PSA Security Convention, Bozeman said.<br /> <br />During the Oct. 24 meeting, Bozeman gave attendees a taste of what the PSA Leadership Institute will include, going through the first chapter of John Maxwell’s book, “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.”</p>
<p>“It will raise the value of PSA to members,” predicted Mike Bradley, president of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Safeguard Security, who has worked closely with HRGroup over the past eight years. Safeguard’s work with HR Group has increased retention and raised the caliber of employees his company has hired, Bradley said.</p>
<p>Eric Yunag, president of Dakota Security of South Dakota, said he appreciates that PSA Security has “vetted and compiled the very best leadership training options for our kind of business.”</p>
<p>Ron Oetjen, president of Intelligent Access Systems of North Carolina agreed, saying most “small- to mid-range integrators don’t have the opportunity to get good, focused leadership training.” It’s something that’s becoming increasingly important “as the Boomers start to retire, there’s not a huge group of young talent coming into the industry … and we’ll be faced with a leadership gap.”</p>
<p>Arthur Beaver, owner of Pittsburgh-based Security Systems of America, said he’s interested in the leadership training and he’ll be recommending that his son, Brice Beaver, president of his company, take the leadership training as well.</p>
<p>“I was impressed,” said Mary Ferry, VP of Operations for Altec Systems of Marietta, Ga. “This was a really good first step to actionable leadership training.”</p>
<p>Sharon Shaw, PSA Security director of education, who worked with Bozeman to develop the leadership training, said this is something PSA members have been requesting. PSA spent a great deal of time reading and researching options to ensure that they chose curriculum and training partners who “are relevant to the integrators.” They also were careful to develop a program that’s delivered in a way that’s flexible enough for company executives to be able to take advantage of, she said.</p> </div>
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<span property="dc:title" content="PSA Security launches Leadership Institute" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:39:18 +0000Tess Nacelewicz15034 at http://www.securitysystemsnews.comhttp://www.securitysystemsnews.com/article/psa-security-launches-leadership-institute#comments